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CONTENTS

  1. Adverbial
  2. Agentive ending
  3. Ain't
  4. American and British English differences
  5. American and British English pronunciation differences
  6. American and British English spelling differences
  7. American English
  8. Amn't
  9. Anglophone
  10. Anglosphere
  11. Apostrophe
  12. Australian English
  13. Benjamin Franklin's phonetic alphabet
  14. Bracket
  15. British and American keyboards
  16. British English
  17. Canadian English
  18. Certificate of Proficiency in English
  19. Classical compound
  20. Cockney
  21. Colon
  22. Comma
  23. Comma splice
  24. Cut Spelling
  25. Dangling modifier
  26. Dash
  27. Definite article reduction
  28. Disputed English grammar
  29. Don't-leveling
  30. Double copula
  31. Double negative
  32. Ellipsis
  33. English alphabet
  34. English compound
  35. English declension
  36. English English
  37. English grammar
  38. English honorifics
  39. English irregular verbs
  40. English language learning and teaching
  41. English modal auxiliary verb
  42. English orthography
  43. English passive voice
  44. English personal pronouns
  45. English phonology
  46. English plural
  47. English relative clauses
  48. English spelling reform
  49. English verbs
  50. English words with uncommon properties
  51. Estuary English
  52. Exclamation mark
  53. Foreign language influences in English
  54. Full stop
  55. Generic you
  56. Germanic strong verb
  57. Gerund
  58. Going-to future
  59. Grammatical tense
  60. Great Vowel Shift
  61. Guillemets
  62. Habitual be
  63. History of linguistic prescription in English
  64. History of the English language
  65. Hyphen
  66. I before e except after c
  67. IELTS
  68. Initial-stress-derived noun
  69. International Phonetic Alphabet for English
  70. Interpunct
  71. IPA chart for English
  72. It's me
  73. Languages of the United Kingdom
  74. Like
  75. List of animal adjectives
  76. List of British idioms
  77. List of British words not widely used in the United States
  78. List of case-sensitive English words
  79. List of commonly confused homonyms
  80. List of common misspellings in English
  81. List of common words that have two opposite senses
  82. List of dialects of the English language
  83. List of English apocopations
  84. List of English auxiliary verbs
  85. List of English homographs
  86. List of English irregular verbs
  87. List of English prepositions
  88. List of English suffixes
  89. List of English words invented by Shakespeare
  90. List of English words of Celtic origin
  91. List of English words of Italian origin
  92. List of English words with disputed usage
  93. List of frequently misused English words
  94. List of Fumblerules
  95. List of homophones
  96. List of -meters
  97. List of names in English with non-intuitive pronunciations
  98. List of words having different meanings in British and American English
  99. List of words of disputed pronunciation
  100. London slang
  101. Longest word in English
  102. Middle English
  103. Modern English
  104. Names of numbers in English
  105. New Zealand English
  106. Northern subject rule
  107. Not!
  108. NuEnglish
  109. Oxford spelling
  110. Personal pronoun
  111. Phonological history of the English language
  112. Phrasal verb
  113. Plural of virus
  114. Possessive adjective
  115. Possessive antecedent
  116. Possessive me
  117. Possessive of Jesus
  118. Possessive pronoun
  119. Preposition stranding
  120. Pronunciation of English th
  121. Proper adjective
  122. Question mark
  123. Quotation mark
  124. Received Pronunciation
  125. Regional accents of English speakers
  126. Rhyming slang
  127. Run-on sentence
  128. Scouse
  129. Semicolon
  130. Semordnilap
  131. Serial comma
  132. Shall and will
  133. Silent E
  134. Singular they
  135. Slash
  136. SoundSpel
  137. Space
  138. Spelling reform
  139. Split infinitive
  140. Subjective me
  141. Suffix morpheme
  142. Tag question
  143. Than
  144. The Reverend
  145. Third person agreement leveling
  146. Thou
  147. TOEFL
  148. TOEIC
  149. Truespel
  150. University of Cambridge ESOL examination
  151. Weak form and strong form
  152. Welsh English
  153. Who
  154. You
 



THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE
This article is from:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_declension

All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Text_of_the_GNU_Free_Documentation_License 

English declension

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 
English grammar series
English grammar
  • Disputed English grammar
  • English verbs
    • English conjugation
    • English irregular verbs
    • English modal auxiliary verb
    • English passive voice
  • English declension
    • English personal pronouns
    • English plural
  • English compound
  • English honorifics
  • English relative clauses
This box: view • talk • edit
Grammatical cases
List of grammatical cases
Abessive case
Ablative case
Absolutive case
Accusative case
Adessive case
Adverbial case
Allative case
Antessive case
Aversive case
Benefactive case
Caritive case
Causal case
Causal-final case
Comitative case
Dative case
Delative case
Direct case
Distantitive case
Distributive case
Distributive-temporal case
Dubitive case
Elative case
Essive case
Essive-formal case
Essive-modal case
Equative case
Evitative case
Excessive case
Final case
Formal case
Genitive case
Illative case
Inessive case
Instructive case
Instrumental case
Lative case
Locative case
Medial case
Modal case
Multiplicative case
Nominative case
Oblique case
Objective case
Partitive case
Perlative case
Postessive case
Possessive case
Postpositional case
Prepositional case
Proximative case
Privative case
Prolative case
Prosecutive case
Separative case
Sociative case
Subessive case
Sublative case
Superessive case
Superlative case
Temporal case
Terminative case
Translative case
Vialis case
Vocative case
 
Morphosyntactic alignment
Absolutive case
Accusative case
Ergative case
Instrumental case
Instrumental-comitative case
Intransitive case
Nominative case
Pegative case
 
Declension
Czech declension
English declension
German declension
Latin declension
Slovak declension  
This box: view • talk • edit

The English language once had an extensive declension system similar to modern German or Icelandic. Old English distinguished between the nominative, accusative, dative, genitive, and instrumental cases. Declension fell into disuse during the Middle English period, when accusative and dative pronouns merged into a single objective pronoun. Nouns in Modern English no longer decline for case, except for remnants of the former system in a few pronouns.

"Who" and "whom", "he" and "him", "she" and "her", etc. are remnants of both the old nominative versus accusative and also of nominative versus dative. In other words, "her" (for example) serves as both the dative and accusative version of the nominative pronoun "she". In Old English as well as modern German and Icelandic as further examples, these cases had distinct pronouns.

This collapse of the separate case pronouns into the same word is one of the reasons grammarians consider the dative and accusative cases to be extinct in English — neither is an ideal term for the role played by "whom". Instead, the term objective is often used; that is, "whom" is a generic objective pronoun which can describe either a direct or an indirect object. The nominative case, "who", is called simply the subjective. The information formerly conveyed by having distinct case forms is now mostly provided by prepositions and word order.

Modern English morphologically distinguishes only one case, the possessive case — which some linguists argue is not a case at all, but a clitic (see the entry for genitive case for more information). With only a few pronominal exceptions, the objective and subjective always have the same form.

Contents

  • 1 Evolution of English declension
    • 1.1 Interrogative pronouns
      • 1.1.1 Old masculine/feminine to the modern person
      • 1.1.2 Old neuter to the modern thing
    • 1.2 First person personal pronouns
      • 1.2.1 Singular
      • 1.2.2 Plural
    • 1.3 Second person personal pronouns
      • 1.3.1 Old and Middle English singular to the Modern English archaic informal
      • 1.3.2 Old and Middle English plural to the archaic formal to the modern general
        • 1.3.2.1 Formal and informal forms of the second person singular and plural
    • 1.4 Third person personal pronouns
      • 1.4.1 Feminine singular
      • 1.4.2 Masculine singular
      • 1.4.3 Neuter singular
      • 1.4.4 Plural
  • 2 External link

Evolution of English declension

Interrogative pronouns

Old masculine/feminine to the modern person

Case Old English Middle English Modern English
Nominative hwā who who
Accusative hwone / hwæne whom who / whom1
Dative hwām / hwǣm
Instrumental hwȳ / hwon
Genitive hwæs whos whose

1 - Most generally speaking, in non-subject rules: "whom" is used in "formal" situations and in writing, while "who" is colloquial or "informal". A dialectal investigation should be taken into consideration, of course.

Old neuter to the modern thing

Case Old English Middle English Modern English
Nominative hwæt what what
Accusative hwæt what / whom
Dative hwām / hwǣm
Instrumental hwī
Genitive hwæs whos whose1

1 - Usually replaced by of which, except where inappropriate

First person personal pronouns

Singular

Case Old English Middle English Modern English
Nominative iċ I / ich I
Accusative mē / meċ me me
Dative mē
Genitive mīn min / mi my, mine

Plural

Case Old English Middle English Modern English
Nominative wē we we
Accusative ūs / ūsiċ us us
Dative ūs
Genitive ūser / ūre ure / our our, ours

Second person personal pronouns

n.b. þ is a letter from Old English, roughly corresponding to th.

Old and Middle English singular to the Modern English archaic informal

Case Old English Middle English Early Modern English
Nominative þū þu / thou thou (you)
Accusative þē / þeċ þé / thee thee (you)
Dative þē
Genitive þīn þi / þīn / þīne / thy /thin / thine thy, thine (your)

Old and Middle English plural to the archaic formal to the modern general

Case Old English Middle English Modern English
Nominative ġē ye / ȝe / you you
Accusative ēow / ēowiċ you, ya
Dative ēow
Genitive ēower your your, yours

You in the nominative case was used in Middle English only as a formal but not as a plural pronoun. So there was a difference between You are (singular formal) and Ye are (plural informal).

Formal and informal forms of the second person singular and plural
  Old English Middle English Modern English
Singular Plural Singular Plural Singular Plural
Case Formal Informal Formal Informal Formal Informal Formal Informal Formal Informal Formal Informal
Nominative þū ġē you thou you ye you
Accusative þē / þeċ ēow / ēowiċ thee you
Dative þē ēow
Genitive þīn ēower your, yours thy, thine your, yours

Third person personal pronouns

Feminine singular

Case Old English Middle English Modern English
Nominative hēo heo / sche / ho / he / ȝho she
Accusative hīe hire / hure / her / heore her
Dative hire
Genitive hire hir / hire / heore / her / here her, hers

Masculine singular

Case Old English Middle English Modern English
Nominative hē he he
Accusative hine him him
Dative him
Genitive his his his

Neuter singular

Case Old English Middle English Modern English
Nominative hit hit / it it
Accusative hit hit / it / him
Dative him
Genitive his his / its its

Plural

Case Old English Middle English Modern English
Nominative hīe he / hi / ho / hie / þai / þei they
Accusative hīe hem / ham / heom / þaim / þem / þam them
Dative him
Genitive hiro here / heore / hore / þair / þar their, theirs

External link

  • The Magic Sheet, one page color PDF summarizing Old English declension
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_declension"

 

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